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Everybody outta the pool…
…a momma black bear checks out our swimming pool! She almost certainly has a cub or two safely behind her but out of sight. For at least 17 years this bear has been raising her family in a den just below what is now Church’s house. More often she is content to splash around in the two-acre pond, again just down the hill. The cubs often think it’s great sport to slap the row boat oars and watch them spin in the oar locks. They’re no danger unless surprised or accidentally cornered. She also is clearly well fed with her very own 200 acres of vegetation and fruit and berries…
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A hymn to farming….
….sort of. We’ve played music from the Peterson Brothers before. They’re young men of a Minnesota farm family telling their story via rap, funk, etc. Unintentionally, they often (as in this video) catalog pretty much all the sins of modern commercial farming. The argument is always that this rape of the land is necessary to feed the world…although almost half the food grown in the world is wasted. So watch it and weep….and rock. Thanks to Bob Cain for the link. 3 Brothers Wrote A Song That Left America In HYSTERICS. What It Says About Farmers? I’m CRYING!!
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Bad beef is getting a little cheaper….
….according to market reports. Industrial beef supplies are dropping from their record highs but still well above the level they were at when the boom began seven years ago. It’s pretty much based on the price of corn and farmers have planted ever inch of ground thanks to the ethanol boom. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-27/fattest-ever-u-s-cattle-herd-signals-end-to-record-beef-prices Normally it takes quite a while…at least six months…for the price a farmer gets to be reflected at the meat counter or restaurant. And with the actual meat accounting for less and less of the price, it’s probably that again it will be the farmer who will be hit….you’ll probably not notice a hamburger getting any cheaper. You…
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Bulletin: Media gets one right….
….along the lines of “monkeys and typewriters” but the Associated Press stumbled onto the truth about ethanol the other day. The big thing is that, thanks to Google and Bing, there’s a good chance that this will become the new narrative. http://wtop.com/index.php?nid=1035&sid=3497726
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Myth busting – Part 3….
….I’m from the government and I’m here to protect you. Bt toxin has been around for a long time; a major ingredient in pesticides farmers use on crops such as corn. But those clever folks at Monsanto developed Genetically Modified Corn that puts the Bt toxin right in the seed. Well, along with all the reservations about GMO food, some experts worried that it would only be a matter of time before those clever bugs developed a resistance to Monsanto’s “wonder seed”. Even the government’s own advisory panel argued against the product but, of course, the USDA ignored it’s own experts and sided with Monsanto. So now, the expected as…
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If this keeps up….
….soon all beef will be grass fed. ….and chicken will cost as much as beef. ….and we’ll all be eating artificial meat and poultry! Don’t kid yourself; that’s the plan. http://www.nationalreview.com/article/356106/corn-broke-cattlemans-back-jillian-kay-Melchior There are quibbles I could make about the article, but at least the mainstream is beginning to question the government on this, too.